SNOW DAY PART 2

Jenna heading down the hill! Look out below!!

Seth enjoying his turn down the hill on the wakeboard.

Sometimes we southerners have to be very creative in what we use for sleds!

Ice on our neighbor's tree this morning.

Getting creative in ways to get around on the ice. This is Seth in our driveway using his hockey stick and wakeboard.

Seth discovered the perils of sledding on ice without gloves. (Noticed he put some gloves on AFTER he messed up his hand?)

SNOW DAY

The forecasters didn't disappoint us this time. Their predictions of snow and sleet were correct! Schools were cancelled already yesterday at 5:45 p.m. in anticipation of the "major" snowstorm. (We have learned since living in the south that "major" usually means a dusting of snow - if that.) This time "major" meant "major". It started to snow in Spring Hill at about 10:45 a.m. and we got about a 3" accumulation. It's been snowing all day and around 4:00 switched over to sleet. I can hear the sleet hitting the window while I'm typing. In watching the late afternoon news, we might get another 3" of snow overnight. Thankfully Steve's office closed early and he was home before the roads got too bad. We all played outside for awhile. Jenna has been outside the most playing with her friends. Seth and some of the younger boys in the cul-de-sac cleared off an area to play hockey. All they needed were the ice skates! Today was the perfect day for a big pot of baked potato cheese soup and some crusty bread. I always like baking on snow days and made some chocolate chocolate chip cookies. We're ready to hunker down for the evening and play some Wii and watch DVD's. As long as the electricity stays on, we'll be fine.

Papa Johns Bowl

We had high hopes for the day as we headed south on I-65 to attend the Papa Johns Bowl game in Birmingham, AL to watch USC vs UConn. It was a cold day and we had snow flurries on our way to Alabama. We got to the stadium about 10:15 and it looked like a home USC football game - USC tailgate tents and fans everywhere. It was a fun, upbeat atmosphere. We walked around the Fan Zone then headed back to the van to eat lunch before heading into the stadium. We went into the stadium about 12:15 for a 1:00 kickoff. Both UConn and USC's bands played for pregame. Immediately upon the first USC drive, we knew it was going to be a long afternoon. Like the guy behind us said, "USC brought the fans; UConn brought the football team." It was a terrible day for the Gamecock faithful. USC lost 20-7. On a bright note for me, I enjoyed seeing both marching bands play for pregame and halftime. Seth enjoyed watching and hearing the bands too. The UConn band was directly across the field from us so we heard them a lot during the game. They have an incredible sound. It was cold throughout the game and because the way the team was playing, many of the USC fans started to leave mid-way thru the 3rd quarter. We stuck it out til about 5 minutes left to go in the game and we left too - missing USC's only score of the game. Thankfully the stadium personnel had a great plan in place for traffic flow and it took us no time at all to get onto the interstate to head back home. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel for some comfort food for dinner. After getting home, Jenna was checking her email and when she signed onto the computer saw the apology from head coach Steve Spurrier to all the 30,000 Gamecock fans who were at the game. Small consolation but it was nice to hear.

Ice Skating

Jenna has been pestering me for at least two years to take her ice skating. I finally took her today. We had a lot of fun and she did fine - which I knew she would since she knows how to rollerblade. She only fell twice (and I didn't fall at all!). Steve stopped by the rink on his lunch hour to watch and took a few pictures.

Christmas

We had a very nice Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at Room in the Inn, a ministry for the homeless. Our church co-hosted 12 homeless men for the evening. We enjoyed eating dinner with them and spending a few hours together. When we got home we continued the tradition of hiding the pickle ornament on the Christmas tree. It was Jenna's turn to hide the pickle since she found it last year.

On Christmas morning, Jenna woke up first at about 7:00. We let Seth sleep until 7:30 then we woke him up. We had to find the pickle ornament first before we could open stockings and gifts. Steve was the one to find it this year. We always open stockings first and this year Jenna put a few things in mine and Steve's stockings too. We opened gifts, had breakfast and played Wii (which was mine and Jenna's big gift this year). About 11:00 we left to go to Sharon and Brad's for the day. Matt was there too. We had snow flurries for about 30 minutes when we got to Sharon's, so that was fun to see. Soon after arriving we enjoyed cheese fondue with veggies and bread cubes. It was delicious! Mid-afternoon we had Udon soup - a Japanese soup that is a favorite of Sharon's on cold winter days. For dinner we did hibachi grilling. It was a little tricky with all the smoke in the house, but once we figured out which doors and windows to open it was fine. Later in the evening we had chocolate fondue for dessert while watching the Titans play.

Seth got a black Terrible Towel from Grammy. Jenna before opening gifts.

My Birthday

I stretched my birthday celebration out as long as I could! At my age, I think I'm entitled to that. Steve said he didn't want me to cook on my actual birthday (Wednesday) so we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner that night. On Saturday, we met Sharon and Brad for lunch at City Limits. City Limits is a small cafe-type restaurant that I hadn't been to in two years. They have THE BEST grilled cheese panini sandwiches. (They use provolone, swiss and cheddar cheeses along with tomato and caesar dressing to make the panini.) That evening, my family made dinner. My only requests were peanutbutter pie for dessert and twice baked potato. Jenna made the pie, Steve made the twice baked potatoes and Seth made steak and shrimp in a garlic butter sauce. Everything was delicious.

Another Last for Jenna

A few months ago I mentioned that Jenna would be having a lot of "lasts" this year since it is her last year in elementary school. Well....yesterday was her "last" class Christmas party. I was able to go for part of it and left feeling a little melancholy that it's her last class party and she'll be moving to middle school in August. The room mom decided to do breakfast for the kids, so they had a feast of donuts, lots of fruit, cheese and crackers, eggs, mini muffins and sausage biscuits with white gravy. They had an ornament exchange and also made an ornament. Jenna didn't want to leave early to come home with me...she wanted to stay the entire morning. School was dismissed at 12:05. Jenna and I started to make buckeyes in the afternoon. We got the peanutbutter part made but need to dip them in chocolate today.